The recent history of ecological anthropology

Attention to the impact of environments on human societies is longstanding in philosophy and geography, but in social and cultural anthropology, stress on the ecological dimension is relatively recent. During the first half of the twentieth century, social and cultural anthropology, whether in the British versions of *Malinowski and *RadcliffeBrown or the American version of *Boas, examined relationships within the social and cultural realm, with little direct attention to relations with the environment. Notwithstanding †Forde’s early (1934) contribution and some relevant ethnographic reports, ecological anthropology only became fully established in the 1960s.